


home where you hold me

by mishcollin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Schmoop, Sleepy Cuddles, i'm sorry to my sophomore english teacher i tried to cut purple prose like you told me to and failed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-26 11:46:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3849766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mishcollin/pseuds/mishcollin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas and Dean, in the moments between their battles, ache for quiet spaces. (10.20 coda)</p>
            </blockquote>





	home where you hold me

            Cas watches the taxi drive down the road until it’s just an amber speck on the pink horizon, but he imagines he can still feel Claire’s gaze cutting to him through the rearview window, even from feet and miles away. The dust and grit whipped up from the road stings his eyes, making them film over with reactionary tears, and for a moment he stands stock-still in the center of the road, dragging his thumb along the fold of his coat pocket, trying to ignore the feeling in his chest like his heart is a clenched fist. Angels, he supposes, aren’t meant to experience sensations that hurt the heart.

            Dean’s voice filters out from the motel room, curious, maybe a little anxious. “Cas?”

            “I’m coming,” Cas answers automatically, still squinting off into the sunset, before he turns and trudges across the road, past the Impala where Dean’s waiting for him.

            He follows Dean into the room, where Sam’s gathering papers and his laptop in a messy heap on the table, and Dean’s hanging around awkwardly, his hands moving from his hips to scratch the back of his head to rubbing his palms along his jean-legs, all telltale nervous tics.

            Sam pauses in his packing and turns to slowly arch an eyebrow at Dean. “Do I need to take you on a walk or something?”

            Dean screws up his face into a mocking expression. “Funny.”

            Sam’s eyes dart back and forth between Dean and Cas for a moment, quick enough to miss, seeming to intuit some sort of cue between their movements before he says, very deliberately, “Actually, _I’m_ going to take a walk. Get some fresh air. Maybe grab a bite to eat.” It seems more like a contrivance than anything, but Sam asks, like he’s expecting them to decline, “Do you two wanna come?”

            “Nah,” Dean says, waving a hand. “I’m gonna hit the hay. Totally bushwhacked.”

            Sam’s gaze transfers to him, almost wry. “Cas?”

            “I’m going to stay with Dean,” Cas says quietly.

            Sam shrugs, just a twitch of a broad shoulder. “Suit yourselves.” He slings his jacket around his shoulders and heads out the door. It shuts behind him with a click.

            Dean instantly seems to go slack in Cas’ periphery vision, and he’s already shedding his jacket and his top layer, toeing off his shoes.

            “Are you alright, Dean?” Cas asks, trying not to watch too closely when Dean stretches his arms above his head with a soft pop of his joints, arching onto his tiptoes in his socks.

            “Yeah, I’m fine,” Dean says on an exhale, relaxing again, rolling his shoulders. “Just fucking tired, you know?”

            “Do you have any injuries? I can heal—”

            “Nah, seriously. Save your energy, Cas.”

            There’s a moment of silence that descends between them; when Cas sneaks a look at Dean, Dean’s already looking at him, biting his lip, maybe a little expectant or hopeful, like he’s trying to voice a question he doesn’t have words for.

            “I’ll probably go to bed too,” Cas says, playing along as he shrugs his coat off, then bends down to remove his own shoes.

            “We can…y’know, share,” Dean says, a little too nonchalantly, already headed for the bed and peeling back the mustard-yellow comforter, and Cas follows after him, biting down on the smile that’s stubbornly trying to form.

            Dean stretches out spread-eagle for a moment before he turns onto his side, faced toward Cas, and there’s a soft, nervous edge to his expression, like they haven’t done this before, like he’s afraid this is the time that Cas is going to reject him.

            As if he could ever, Cas thinks fondly, climbing into bed beside him, and in a strangely fluid movement like two waves cresting, Dean slips his hands around the wings of Cas’ shoulder-blades and pulls him in until they’re pressed flush together. The action has the quiet cadence of ritual, although they almost never talk about it later, the desperate and momentary ache to share each other’s space, heat, breaths.

            Dean makes a soft, contented little hum and tucks his chin on the top of Cas’ head, and Cas feels some of the tension in Dean’s frame melt away.

            “Do you think she’ll be alright?” Cas asks to Dean’s chest, closing his eyes, allowing the phantom-like bursts of human sensations to flood through him again. Touch, warmth, craving—they feel mechanic, almost manufactured in his angelic form, but Cas can still remember, objectively, all the ways in which his body could hurt.

            “Yeah,” Dean says, his voice gravelly, and Cas can feel the vibration of Dean’s voice through his chest, can parse out the solid, steady thump of his heart. “She’s tough. And Jody’s one of the best. Trust me, Claire’s in good hands.”

            “Are you okay?” Cas asks again, quieter, a different inflection—the kind that usually gets Dean to answer honestly.

            Dean’s sigh fills his whole chest like a hollow drum, then deflates just as slowly. “I don’t know. I don’t really want to think about it. Just….keep my nose to the grindstone, or whatever.”

            Cas’ hands drift up to Dean’s shoulder-blades, where he can feel knots of tension all along the cords of soft muscle, and slowly kneads his fingers into it. Dean instantly goes lax and groans, rocking slightly into Cas’ ministrations, his shoulders rolling.

            “Add some mojo and you make a real living as a masseuse, Cas,” Dean jokes, and when Cas tilts his head up, Dean’s eyes are closed in a rare expression of peace, the freckles along the arches of his cheeks seeming more prominent in the motel’s dim lamplight.

            “I’ll keep that in mind,” Cas replies, massaging his knuckles into a knot he can feel forming along the bridge of Dean’s shoulder and neck.

            Dean hums contentedly and slips his leg between Cas’, curling it around so their calves are pretzeled together.

            “I worry about you,” Cas murmurs, gently sliding his hand along the back of Dean’s neck where he can feel goosebumps, pebbly to the touch. “I’m always worried about you.”

            “I’m worried about me,” Dean says, almost lightly, but there’s something miserable to the tone, and when Cas pulls back to survey his expression, his eyes are closed again, his brow pinched in this distressed expression, and Cas can’t help it, what he does next—he leans forward, slowly enough to give Dean warning of his proximity, and kisses the corner of his mouth.

            Dean slowly pulls back, his eyes flickering open, a sliver of bottle-green in the darkening dusk of the room.

            “We shouldn’t,” he says hoarsely, his gaze flicking down to Cas’ mouth, and it’s not like they haven’t done this before, in stolen moments between apocalypses, in the back of the Impala outside a Gas-n’-Sip, in motel rooms in dumpy one-stop towns—but it’s never a thing of permanence, never a thing they speak of in the broad light of day.

            “We shouldn’t,” Dean says again, but he’s already drifting back into Cas’ space again, begging with every inch of his body language to be touched and held, and for a moment, they’re simply touching foreheads, eyes closed, noses gliding against each other. Dean breathes out—Cas breathes in, symbiotic, a push-pull of breath. Cas has that tight feeling in his chest again, like something electric is blooming up his throat, out his mouth, and he can’t speak—he knows so many languages, all of them, yet Dean somehow renders him wordless, every time.

            Cas has considerable more patience and willpower, given maybe his age or species, so Dean cracks first in the way that all humans do—needy, impulsive, every moment a stone thrown from the end of the world. He kisses Cas with a soft, wet drag of his mouth, and Cas—God help him, Cas is lost by it, pressing forward eagerly so he can chase the tiny hurt sounds that spill from Dean’s lips every time their mouths part. Dean and Cas kissing has always been as easy as breathing—a natural coalescence of two pieces meant to align. It’s everything else that gets thrown into the disarray.

            Dean’s hand slips down Cas’ back, cupping his hip, and Cas can feel Dean’s socked toe sliding along the arch of his foot contentedly.

            “I miss you,” Dean says, so quietly that Cas knows he’s allowed to mishear it; Dean’s given him the option to take the words or leave them, and Cas takes them wholly, just breathes them in until they resonate in him.

            “You too,” Cas breathes, and he wants to pepper the words _always, always, always_ along Dean’s neck with his mouth, but there’s a terrifying breach of intimacy that even they haven’t touched yet, a bridge they’re too scared to cross for fear of never returning the same, maybe.

            “When this is all over,” Dean says, pulling back, not bothering to clarify, “we should—”

            He swallows, cutting himself off, gazing at Cas with a desperation that hurts. Dean can never finish that sentence no matter how many times he’s tried, like the idea is too inconceivable to articulate, and Cas understands.

            “We should,” Cas agrees, slipping his hand up Dean’s shirt, along his skin, to spread his fingers over his heart.

            “We will,” Dean says like he doesn’t believe it. He presses his lips into Cas’ hair, resting his forehead there. “One day we will.”

            “I know,” Cas says, leaning back in. He breathes out slow, human heart steady. “I know, Dean.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Imogen Heap's "Entanglement."


End file.
